Today, Matthew Yglesias argues that we should "just say no" to wedding gifts.

The cost of a wedding in Kyrgyzstan.

Soon after her announcement, I received an e-mail invitation to a "Barbecue Wedding." What? No official wedding invitations? The dress is casual, the invitation said. Casual? I read on. Please bring a dish? No filet mignon, or stuffed chicken?

Nobody is forcing you to go to weddings.

S thought it might be fun to have some/all of the bridesmaids stay in a few houses near the venue, and her mom has reserved some houses. Below I've pasted the links to the places her mom reserved, as well as how many bedrooms each place has, and how much it will cost per night (these places might say they have no availability for the nights we need, but that's because she's already booked them).

How much should you have to spend on a wedding gift?

Apparently, "250,000 weddings are called off every year," which disrupts the Wedding Industrial Complex because it leaves a bunch of venue and vendors hanging. But this Bridal Brokerage firm will buy your cancelled wedding so you can recover some of your deposits back, and resells it to couples who are looking to have "beautiful, pre-planned weddings at a fraction of the price."

The Ruettingers spent $200 to connect their videocamera to a streaming server, but there are also streaming services that provide professional videographers at a cost of $800-$3,000, according to this WSJ story. Of course, you could always just skip the whole thing altogether.

We got married in a judge's private office on a Friday afternoon. Besides my husband, the only other people present were my sister, and three close friends. I told my parents a week before we got married what our plans were, and they asked, "Why so quickly? What's the hurry?" It wasn't quick or sudden for us; we'd been talking about getting married for months. The major impediment we kept circling around was that we didn't want a wedding.

I have one more wedding to attend this year. It's going to be in Texas next week, and will be amazing.